"Il se trouve dans le cloistre une bibliothèque publique, qui s'ouvre soir et matin pendant les séances des Cours de Justice dans Westminstre."
μ.
Sir Alexander Cumming (Vol. iii., p. 39.).—In answer to an inquiry relative to Sir Alexander Cumming, of Culter, I may refer to the Scottish Journal (Menzies, Edin. 1848) of Topography, Antiquities, Traditions, &c., vol. ii. p. 254., where an extract from a MS. autobiography of the baronet is given. The work in which this occurs is little known; but, as a repertory of much curious and interesting information, deserved a more extensive circulation than it obtained. It stopped with the second volume, and is now somewhat scarce, as the unsold copies were disposed of for waste paper.
Pater-noster Tackling (Vol. iii., p. 89.).—Pater-noster fishing-tackle, so called in the shops, is used to catch fish (perch, for instance) which take the bait at various distances between the surface and the bottom of the water. Accordingly, hooks are attached to a line at given intervals throughout its length, with leaden shots, likewise regularly distributed, in order to sink it, and keep it extended perpendicularly in the water.
This regularity of arrangement, and the resemblance of the shots to beads, seems to have caused the contrivance to have been, somewhat fancifully, likened to a chaplet or rosary. In a rosary there is a bead longer than the rest, for distinction's sake called the Pater-noster; from whence that name applies to a rosary; and, therefore, to anything likened to it; and, therefore, to the article of fishing-tackle in question.
The word pater-noster, i.e. pater-noster-wise, is an heraldic term (vide Ash's Dictionary), applied to beads disposed in the form of a cross.
Robert Snow.
Welsh Words for Water (Vol. iii., p. 30.).—
"It is quite surprising," says Sharon Turner (Trans. of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. i. pt. i. p. 97.), "to observe that, in all the four quarters of the world, many nations signify this liquid by a vocable of one or more syllables, from the letter M."
He mentions the Hebrew word for it, mim; in Africa he finds twenty-eight examples, in Asia sixteen, in South America five, in North America three, in Europe three; and elsewhere, in Canary Islands one, in New Zealand one. He adds—